A Craft Blog by Stephanie Chan

Like all kidful households, we’ve got a mountain of paper with crayon scribbles and I just can’t bring myself to throw it out. So I took a little bit of it to make decoupage kids’ art beads, from which I made a fun dress-up necklace for each of my girls plus some for myself!

When my twin girls were but a twinkle in my eye (or two twinkles in my eye?), I had my own wedding jewelry business for two fun but very busy years. One of my favorite things to make were these hairpins that look like blossoms on little branches. Brides usually requested them with clear beads and/or pearls for themselves, and colored beads for their bridesmaids. One asked for a single blue bead as her something blue, which I replicated in the first photo below.

But even if you’re not planning a wedding anytime soon, this is still a great technique to learn…all you have to do is change up the beads and you’ve got a completely different look for everyday.